


The Walled Garden

by osunism



Series: Fractured Possibilities [16]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-08
Updated: 2016-09-08
Packaged: 2018-08-13 22:48:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7988971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osunism/pseuds/osunism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki shows up in Amber's apartment one night after a long absence...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Walled Garden

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know. It's been a while since I've written anything for these two. I had a dream and started feeling nostalgic.

****By the time Amber stumbled into her apartment—a noisy mess of jangling keys, stiletto heels on hardwood, and the stretch and creak of her oversized weekender bag—she was exhausted. Stepping out of her shoes, she felt the world grow slightly larger as she returned to her natural height. Everything was quiet now that she was inside, but the city was still noisy, with the winking lights of passing cars moving like ghosts beyond the curtains of her windows.

Amber ignored it all, dropping her bag at the door and shuffling to her bedroom where she promptly stripped out of her clothing and turned on the shower. There, she felt herself finally come together. She stood underneath the streaming water, feeling a shiver down her spine as the warmth seeped into her scalp. After showering, she wrapped her hair in a towel and stood in front of the mirror, surveying the damage done. Amber saw that without the glitter, without the makeup, she was bruised and weary. She traced the arch of one of her brows with a fingertip, frowning at some perceived imperfection, trailing her fingertips over her cheek, beneath her dark eyes, along the bridge of her nose…

She gasped when she felt a pair of hands not her own slide along her hips.

“You were always more beautiful without the accoutrements of your occupation, my dear.” His voice slithered over her skin as she heard him before she saw him. One moment he wasn’t there, and then suddenly he was. His eyes, a frosty, preternatural green, met hers in the mirror.

“What you doing here?” She asked him, her voice tired. Loki never took his eyes off their reflection, his grip on her hips shifting to her waist. His mouth at her ear moved, but the words seem to come delayed.

“A pertinent question,” he said slyly, “one I could answer if I were actually here.”

Amber sucked her teeth in annoyance and frowned, reached up, and waved her hand. The illusion dispelled in a flash of verdant light. She left the bathroom and went to bed, damp hair and all.

Sleep came easier than she expected, and she settled into it, eyes closing, letting herself sink deeper.

It was the brush of fingertips along the softness of her thighs that began to rouse her hours later. Amber curled in on herself and sat up abruptly, finding herself alone in the darkness of her room. She mumbled something, and then crawled under the covers, abandoning the towel that had loosed her hair, still damp and frizzing. Knowing she’d have her work ahead of her in taming it come morning, she lay back down.

A pair of green eyes glittered in the darkness of the doorway, and Loki stepped into the bedroom, a mixture of cold light and cooler darkness. He watched her for a time, watched her adjust, heedless of his presence, and wondered not for the first time if he should have told her what was coming, and that like so many of the horrible things she’d endured, it would be his fault. He wondered if there was any way he could protect her from it, and knew the answer. He remembered Baldur’s words, remembered Camilla’s own prophecy as well, and the glimpse of the fractured possibilities she’d shown him. His fate and Amber’s were bound, yes, but so long as he remained in her life, her own would be cut short.

By his own doing, no less.

Very few things got under the trickster’s skin, but somehow love, and all the infectious complications of it, had managed to poison his resolve. What would happen would happen and there was precious little he could do about it. He would just have to endure the consequence as he always did.

He sat at the edge of the bed, and watched Amber’s eyes open slightly.

“You here for real?” She mumbled. Loki didn’t smile even though he wanted to. Somehow, toying with her didn’t bring him the same twisted joy that toying with Thor and his friends did. So Loki did something he didn’t like doing yet felt compelled to do anyway: he told the truth.

“Yes.” He said, “I apologize for coming uninvited. I am likely the last person you wish to lay eyes on.”

Amber sat up, her head dwarfed by the cloud of hair on her head.

“If you tryna apologize,” she said with a laugh, “you should probably start by admitting what you did wrong.”

Loki’s face twisted into a frown of indignation, but for some reason, the steadiness of her gaze made him feel foolish, which angered him. He hated feeling foolish.

“I killed your brother,” he murmured, “and since we’ve met I’ve brought nothing but misery to you. And yet you do not seek vengeance against me, as is your right.”

Amber shrugged.

“Loki, you really think I could take you on in a fight?” She asked him. Loki did smile then, a wry smirk that curled his thin lips and made him look sinister.

“A fair point, but…you did slap me when we first met.” He told her. Amber smiled in a way that made her look charming and he was reminded why her customers seemed so eager to give her their money.

“I did,” she agreed, “you had it coming. But…I hope you’re at least _trying_ to stay out of trouble?”

Loki was silent. He would tell her the truth, but he’d make no promises on _that_ account. Amber sighed but she didn’t look too disappointed, only slightly let down.

“It was worth a try,” she said tiredly, “you coming to bed?”

Loki hesitated. It had been a while since she’d invited him to bed…to sleep with her at least. It was a small comfort he shared with no other, a bit of tranquility no one could take from him, but only when she offered.

“If you’ll have me.” He said, and was surprised when she reached for him, meeting him in a kiss. Startled, he didn’t hold her, only let her press her lips against his, and then he remembered everything. He’d stitched and sealed away those feelings for the storm to come, had walled them away in hopes of forgetting. His arms came around her, and his lips parted beneath hers.

She’d have him, and then some.

Amber guided him as he stripped out of his clothes, and he felt vulnerable beneath her touch, his skin cool and pale in the artificial light shining through her window. She straddled him, tracing and mapping the contours of his face and body with a tenderness that made him ache. Loki would never admit it, but he had missed this. He missed being looked at like this, missed being touched as if he meant something to another, and he missed all the soft curves of her, from the heaviness of her breasts, to the softness of her waist, to the wide flare of her hips and thighs.

He touched her too.

“No tricks.” She told him, a warning and a shared joke between them. Loki pinched one of her nipples with a smirk.

“No promises.” He said back, swallowing hard as she reached down to grip the firm length of his cock, guiding it along the moist lips of her sex, slicking the head over and over until he thought he’d have to tumble her himself. When she finally sank down onto him, he allowed himself a groan of relief.

Amber moved slowly, gently, letting him feel himself withdraw from her, then sink back in, a slick and hot glide. She was so wet he could hear it, an erotic sound as she slid against him. Loki gripped her soft waist, his fingers sinking into her supple skin. No tricks, she’d said, but she hadn’t forbidden him his magic.

The first touch of cold magic to her breasts made Amber bite her lip on a sound of surprise and laughter. She swatted him playfully,seating herself upon him fully to wipe the smirk from his face. He pulled her down instead, letting her hair obscure them both as they kissed, the sound of their sharp breaths mingling with the slick and wet sound of him moving in and out of her.

It was gentle and not, playful and familiar, and Loki felt something in him he’d not expected to feel for a long time yet. They laughed, even as he beat back the weight of what was to come when this brief respite reached its end. And when she came, shiveringand biting into his shoulder, he held onto her tightly, allowing himself to climax, feeling the relief flood his blood like a rush of bourbon to the senses.

Afterward, they lay together, a tangle of light and dark limbs. He gazed at her with clarity, while her dark eyes were soft and blurred with pleasure, her gaze heavy-lidded, her smile languorous.

“Where you gonna go, after this?” She asked him. Loki would never understand how she cut to the truth so quickly and efficiently. He always considered himself a veritable Gordian Knot of lies and deceit, and yet Amber was the blade to cut through it all and get to the truth of everything.

She reminded him, oddly, of his mother, Frigga.

“Does it matter?” He asked her and she stared at him unblinking, her expression unchanged. She was searching for something that Loki refused to reveal to her, and he clung to the facade of peace stubbornly. If he could resist telling her the truth in this, he would regain confidence in his abilities. But the truth was a steady cadence in him, hovering in his throat, ready to launch itself into a manifestation at a moment’s notice.

Amber pillowed her chin on her folded arms, shrugging.

“No, but if you don’t wanna tell me it’s cool.” She said casually and Loki felt slightly affronted that she didn’t pry. He both wanted her to ask and didn’t want her to ask, and now that she allowed him this small deception, he no longer felt the victory of it. He almost told her the truth to spite her acquiescence.

“The less you know, the safer you’ll be.” He said instead, “Just know I will come back if I can.”

Amber gazed at him sidelong, smiling.

“How long that gonna be, Loki-baby?” She asked slyly, “Tonight’s the first time I’ve seen you in six months. How long until next time? A year? Two? You know what could happen in that amount of time?”

Loki forgot that timelines of that length were but mere blinks to him. But Amber…she was mortal as they came. Fragile, fleeting, and utterly doomed. A year would do nothing to temper her beauty, but anything could happen in a year and more. She could meet someone, quit her job…fall in love with someone else.

Jealousy bloomed in him, spindly and viperous, at the thought of anyone else having her. She was his! This was the one thing that was untainted by the shadow of his brother’s might, that was not a secondhand castoff of Thor’s conquests. He’d earned her, and he would keep her.

A year was a long time to a mortal human.

Amber sensed his growing agitation and sighed.

“If you’re worried about coming back and finding me married with three kids…don’t.” She said, running her tongue across her top row of teeth. “I mean, that shit sound nice in theory but like…I don’t know. Marriage and kids ain’t never really been my thing. But like…feelings can change.”

Loki frowned.

“And so at last you tell the truth,” he said contemptuously, “you imply that you won’t love me if a year passes between us.”

Amber shrugged. “I love you, now,” she said, “don’t that mean shit to you?”

“Of course it does, you silly woman.” Loki snapped, “But what can change that? It will certainly be no fault of mine if you stop loving me in a year.”

“Life can change it, Loki,” Amber argued, “and if you not here to just…experience life with me, what am I supposed to do? Guard my heart like some dumbass girl from a fairytale until her prince comes to rescue her? I got shit to do, Loki.”

“You’re angry with me.” He said sullenly.

“ _No_ , I’m _annoyed_ with you.” Amber said irritably. “You won’t even tell me what you hiding from me but you mad I’m being honest.”

Loki sat up.

“It was foolish of me to come here tonight,” he muttered, “I should go.”

Amber reached for his arm.

“So that’s it?” She demanded, “I tell you shit might change in a year—and they do!—and you turn tail and run? I thought you were gonna do better.”

Loki was already dressing.

“I am doing better,” he snarled, “and you’d know this if you’d bothered to look. All I have done has been to protect you.”

Amber shook her head. “Don’t bullshit me.”

Loki stilled himself.

“I’m not.” He said, “But it’s been made rather clear that you and I are heading in different directions, now. I promised you I would come back if I could…and you tell me you might not be here when I do.”

Amber drew back, stung.

“That’s not what I meant.” She protested, but Loki was already leaving. She wanted to chase him, but she knew that’s exactly what he wanted, and that he’d gloat if she did. So she willed herself to stay put, not giving him the satisfaction of seeing that he’d wounded her. She dashed the tears from her eyes.

Loki vanished as he passed through her doorway, ignoring the twinge on what he thought were nerveless heartstrings.

Amber let out a choked sob and Loki sighed on the other side of her apartment door knowing what he’d just done was absolutely necessary.

It was the only way to protect her.


End file.
